by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u201d Did It (Again)!<\/strong><\/p>\n There are no \u201coil men\u201d in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office. Which leads to the question: why then are prices now climbing when the Bush-oil company connection is no longer the narrative? The new answer? \u201cWall Street\u201d (e.g., the fat-cat bankers, corporate jet owners, those who don\u2019t know when not to profit, etc.) raised prices.<\/p>\n But if true, who let them get away with that? The Chinese, who are scrounging every barrel they can on the world market? The Indians, who follow suit? Maybe it\u2019s the Obama administration Treasury that has borrowed $5 trillion in three years, not only eroding the buying power of the world-traded dollar but also sending a message to oil producers that even more debt is coming and their petrodollars will only be worth less and less?<\/p>\n Or perhaps it is growing world tension, as in Iran, that caused the panic? But then who snubbed the Green revolution in Iran in the spring of 2009, sought \u201coutreach\u201d and \u201creset\u201d with the theocracy, and leveled five serial demands to stop Iranian enrichment (or else!) to the point that Iran no doubt understood 2009-2012 was a once-in-a-lifetime exempt window of opportunity to get the bomb and to control the Gulf?<\/p>\n To paraphrase William Tecumseh Sherman, Obama might as well rail at the wind. The administration\u2019s current panic mode arises because we are nearing $5 a gallon. (I just filled up two miles away in West Selma, with a supposed 21% unemployment rate and a per capita income of about $14,000, and the price today was $4.27.) It is only early March. Obama may blame Wall Street, but he is savvy enough to do the following calculus: by August, people will want to drive more than they do in March; the Chinese will suddenly not wish to buy less oil this summer; he has no federal leases that he approved in January 2009 that will be coming on line after three-and-a-half years; Volts\u00a0will not be going into hyper-production mode<\/a>\u00a0[1]; and prices will only go up just as the campaign and the weather heat up. There is about an hour\u2019s worth of Obama administration past quotes on gas prices that should make\u00a0some interesting campaign ads<\/a>\u00a0[2].<\/p>\n High Gas Prices Are Good Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n So what exactly is the administration\u2019s reaction to skyrocketing gas prices? That should be an absurd question \u2014 except that we know administration officials are either on record as indifferent to the high cost of gasoline, or in fact hoping for higher prices.<\/p>\n Consider also the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline; the restrictions of new federal oil leases in the West, Alaska, offshore, and in the Gulf; Obama\u2019s prior promises that energy prices would skyrocket because of his efforts to enact cap and trade; his boast to help Brazil out by importing its new offshore oil finds; his worries only over the abrupt rate of gas increases in 2011 rather than his desire for gradual, steadier escalation; Energy Secretary Chu\u2019s various statements that\u00a0high prices were not such a concern<\/a>\u00a0[3] and indeed that he wished to see gas reach European levels (e.g., $8-10 a gallon);\u00a0Interior Secretary Salazar\u2019s insistence<\/a>\u00a0[4] that even $10 gas would not open up new federal oil lands; and on and on.<\/p>\n I think that such words and deeds translate into some technocratic \u201cnever waste a crisis\u201d dream in which we adapt to mass transit, begin to pile into Smart cars and subsidized government Volts, arrange our power use around the cycles of the Sun and wind, and in general consume far less as dictated by those in the technocratic overseer class,\u00a0the waiting-Escalades-on-the-tarmac bunch<\/a>\u00a0[5] who by needs must consume far, far more to save us from ourselves. The financiers of\u00a0Solyndra and other failed subsidized firms<\/a>\u00a0[6] are somehow exempt from the sorts of invective leveled at those who produce oil, as if we like those who lose our money and end up producing nothing but despise those who make a profit, pay taxes, and get us to work in the morning.<\/p>\n \u201cSkyrocketing\u201d for Thee, \u201cOrchid-Growing\u201d Temperatures for Me<\/strong><\/p>\n I say technocratic because only those who work for government or live in larger cities or do not depend on driving vans, pick-up trucks, tractors, or semis could think it was wise for an oil- and natural gas-rich nation not to exploit fully its own natural resources. (Can any of you readers recall a civilization that in the past voluntarily chose not to exploit a valuable natural resource when it could be done safely, without damage, and to great profit?)<\/p>\n Whatever the level that the price of gas reaches, Barack Obama and Steven Chu and the technocracy won\u2019t feel it all that much. Do you remember Obama\u2019s first day in office when he abruptly ordered the temperature in the White House dialed up? (Had that \u201coil man\u201d Bush been too energy-conscious?) David Axelrod himself complained\u00a0that one could grow orchids<\/a>[7] at Obama\u2019s new presidentially mandated heat: \u201cskyrocketing\u201d prices for us, but orchid growing for the president?<\/p>\n Think of some of the ramifications of this faculty lounge policy (I use that term empirically rather than as invective, given I taught among faculty for 21 years). Americans must borrow even more billions to import ever-higher priced oil that enriches many of our enemies, all of which will be pumped abroad under far more lax environmental conditions than had we developed our own resources here at home. (What happened to \u201cPlanet Earth\u201d?)<\/p>\n Increased gas costs will also simply transfer lots of dollars that might have been spent in America to foreign governments, and will curb consumer consumption of other goods in an economic downturn. Is the driving force then some philosophical desire to restrict crass American materialism in order to return to a preferable pre-carbon dioxide Golden Age past? And if so, are the president\u2019s sudden complaints about high gas prices and considerations to draw again from the strategic petroleum reserve entirely cynical, in the sense that once reelected, he and Secretary Chu will accelerate their restrictionist policies in hopes of keeping gas prices even higher? (We are already halfway on the road to \u201cEuropean levels.\u201d) Or of making subsidized Solyndra- and Volt-like projects at last viable?<\/p>\n Why would the president consider tapping the strategic oil reserve, but not start a breakneck effort at developing new sources? Is previously pumped oil less polluting; does it increase supply and lower prices in a way that freshly pumped oil does not? Does his mockery of \u201cdrill, drill, drill\u201d suggest that \u201cnot drill, not drill, and not drill\u201d is a wiser alternative? Does Obama realize that even an extra 3 to 4 million barrels a day produced here would earn the US billions in extra revenue and help to stabilize world prices by taking a commensurate amount of American demand off the world market?<\/p>\n The Strange Case of Dr. Chu<\/strong><\/p>\n Give credit to Steven Chu. He\u2019s not backing down and most recently reiterated to Congress that high prices\u00a0are not much of a concern of this administration<\/a>[8]. (But Mr. Chu: if they go up any more, you will soon be out of a job, yes?) In contrast, and faced with reelection, the president now brags that we are using less fuel and pumping more of it than when he took office. Again, examine that surreal logic: because unemployment is high and GDP growth low, there is less demand for gas, and that is suddenly a good thing? (Note how \u2014 for the first time? \u2014 Obama does not blame Bush for lowering gas demand as he had serially for causing the economic doldrums: \u201cBush wrecked the economy but I was smart enough to make it far worse to lower gas demand.\u201d)<\/p>\n Then the president boasted further that domestic production is at an all-time high. Consider that weird reasoning as well: although he curtailed production on federal lands where there are now record levels of known oil and gas reserves, private industry has developed horizontal drilling and fracking \u2014 despite, rather than because of, the president \u2014 on mostly private land in the Dakotas and elsewhere. Is the reasoning, then, something like: \u201cCongratulations to the oil industry for ignoring me\u201d?<\/p>\n In sum, from January 2009 to January 2011 \u2014 in the pre-Climategate days before Al Gore was a \u201csex poodle\u201d and when the Himalayan glaciers were to be swamps and polar bears extinct \u2014 new gas and oil production was considered \u201cbad,\u201d given that Obama was pushing wind, solar, and \u201calternative\u201d energies. In those giddy cap-and-trade days, he could afford to pontificate because he was not up for reelection and world demand was sluggish, dropping oil prices at the wellhead. When the world economy began rebounding, demand picked up, prices spiked, and now Obama is in campaign mode: suddenly high gas prices are bad and he claims not that he wants his House-approved cap-and-trade bill pushed through his Democratically controlled Senate, but rather that all along he has encouraged private enterprise to drill while successfully persuading us to cut back our consumption (as if we did so because of the impressive oratory of Barack Obama rather than because he had managed to ensure millions of Americans now had no jobs to drive to work to).<\/p>\n The Omnipotent Mr. Obama<\/strong><\/p>\n Why is it that Obama takes credit for the rebound of the stock market after the historic drops in September 2008, but sees the price of gas as extraneous in a way speculation on Wall Street is not? To say that gas prices have doubled under his watch is considered by sophisticates simplistic and reductionist, given all the factors beyond his control that contribute to such increases; to say that Wall Street has improved under his watch is to appreciate the brilliantly subtle and clever manner in which an omnipotent Obama has restored financial confidence and restored some of our lost 401(k) plans.<\/p>\n Obama keeps claiming that the oil companies are gouging us. Some of them may well be doing that; after all, they can profit well enough at the old $40-$50-a-barrel levels on about 45% of our supply produced domestically, and \u201cneed\u201d not receive $110 for their Texas or Dakota oil at the world price. But such thinking assumes that we all should sell our product at less than we might to help fellow Americans. The farmer who produces almonds need not sell his crop at $1 a pound off the tree because he does not \u201cneed\u201d such profits, even though he realizes that world demand has forced the price up (from the old $.75 a pound) that he could receive by exporting his almonds. In other words, everything produced in the United States that has the potential to be exported has a \u201cworld\u201d price in this globally interconnected world, and the fact that oil does too does not make its producers inherently evil. We might as well try to convince this new generation of gold miners to sell their product to fellow Americans at $500 an ounce to help lower the deficit rather than to \u201cgouge\u201d us at demanding a \u201cworld\u201d price of $1500 an ounce that is well beyond what they \u201cneed\u201d to profit from mining.<\/p>\n So here we are: as gas keeps spiraling the secretary of energy simply cannot any longer remark on the resulting deleterious effects since he is on record that they are not deleterious. And the president has urged us to consider, in lieu of Neanderthal drilling, our sizable algae reserves (does algae grow in the US more abundantly than elsewhere?) in a manner that he once urged us to inflate our tires and \u201ctune up\u201d our electronic ignition cars.<\/p>\n So no worry: we have two Nobel laureates in Dr. Chu and Barack Obama to see us through.<\/p>\n URLs in this post:<\/p>\n [1] will not be going into hyper-production mode:http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2012\/03\/02\/short-circuit-chevy-volt-to-halt-production-for-five-weeks-1300-workers-to-be-laid-off\/<\/a> \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cThey\u201d Did It (Again)! There are no \u201coil men\u201d in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[208,271],"tags":[56,12,105,149,291,405,213,320,219],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-eI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/faith-based-energy-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":0},"title":"Faith-Based Energy Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-gasoline-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":1},"title":"A Gasoline Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Obama is barnstorming the west \u2014 blasting oil companies, trying to convince voters that he supports an \u201call of the above\u201d policy, and reminding them that drilling has increased since his tenure. But that won\u2019t work for five reasons. 1) No one believes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":479,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberal-chickens\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":2},"title":"Liberal Chickens","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It could not last \u2014 the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright\u2019s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Left"","block_context":{"text":"The Left","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/liberalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3463,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/after-obama-the-deluge\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":3},"title":"After Obama, the Deluge","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission \u2014 and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in US history. The ensuing $3 trillion dollars in red\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-made-energy-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":4},"title":"A Man-Made Energy Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad? That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not, when the Obama administration has stopped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5710,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/after-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":912,"position":5},"title":"After Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We can imagine what lies ahead in 2017 \u2014 no matter the result of either the 2014 midterm elections or the 2016 presidential outcome. There will be no more $1 trillion deficits. About $10 trillion will have been added to the national debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n[2] some interesting campaign ads:http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2012\/02\/29\/morning-bell-white-house-wants-to-keep-gas-prices-high\/<\/a>
\n[3] high prices were not such a concern:http:\/\/townhall.com\/columnists\/victordavishanson\/2011\/04\/28\/are_sky-high_gas_prices_good<\/a>
\n[4] Interior Secretary Salazar\u2019s insistence:http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/04\/21\/obamaphenia-2\/<\/a>
\n[5] the waiting-Escalades-on-the-tarmac bunch:http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2012\/01\/26\/video-obama-greenfail\/<\/a>
\n[6] Solyndra and other failed subsidized firms:\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/2011\/09\/16\/solyndra-the-logical-endpoint-of-obamanomics\/<\/a>
\n[7] that one could grow orchids:\u00a0http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2009\/01\/29\/the-age-of-obama-heat-for-me-but-not-for-thee\/<\/a>
\n[8] are not much of a concern of this administration:http:\/\/ace.mu.nu\/archives\/327100.php<\/a><\/p>\n